Description

How does South Africa deal with public art from its years of colonialism and apartheid? How do new monuments address fraught histories and commemorate heroes of the struggle? Across South Africa, statues commemorating figures such as Cecil Rhodes have provoked heated protests, while new works commemorating icons of the liberation struggle have also sometimes proved contentious. In this lively volume, Kim Miller, Brenda Schmahmann, and an international group of contributors examine statues and memorials as well as performance, billboards, and other temporal modes of communication, considering the implications of not only the exposure but also erasure of events and icons from the public domain. Revealing how public visual expressions articulate histories and memories, they explore how such works may serve as a forum in which tensions surrounding race, gender, identity, or nationhood play out.

Author Bio

Kim Miller is Associate Professor and holds the Jane Oxford Keiter Professorship of women's and gender studies and art history at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. Miller’s scholarship, which examines the relationship between visual culture, gender, and power in African arts, includes her forthcoming book, How Did They Dare? Women’s Activism and the Work of Memory in South African Commemorative Art.

Brenda Schmahmann is Professor and the South African Research Chair in South African Art and Visual Culture at the University of Johannesburg. She has written, edited, or coedited a number of volumes on South African art, the most recent of which are Picturing Change: Curating Visual Culture at Post-Apartheid Universities and The Keiskamma Art Project: Restoring Hope and Livelihoods.

Customer Reviews

Table of Contents

Introduction: Engaging with Public Art in South Africa, 1999–2015 / Kim Miller and Brenda SchmahmannAcknowledgments

Part 1: Negotiating Difficult Histories1. A Janus-like Juncture: Reconciling Past and Present at the Voortrekker Monument and Freedom Park / Elizabeth Rankin2. A Thinking Stone and Some Pink Presidents: Negotiating Afrikaner Nationalist Monuments at the University of the Free State / Brenda Schmahmann3. The Mirror and the Square—Old Ideological Conflicts in Motion: Church Square Slavery Memorial / Gavin Younge

Part 2: Defining and Redefining Heroes4. Public Art as Political Crucible: Andries Botha’s Shaka and Contested Symbols of Zulu Masculinity and Culture in Kwazulu-Natal / Liese van der Watt5. Mandela’s Walk and Biko’s Ghosts: Public Art and the Politics of Memory in Port Elizabeth’s City Center / Naomi Roux6. Commemorating Solomon Mahlangu: The Making and Unmaking of a "Struggle" Icon / Gary Baines

Part 3: Erasures and Ruins 7. The Pain of Memory and the Violence of Erasure: Real and Figural Displays of Female Authority in the Public Sphere / Kim Miller 8. Transgressive Touch: Ruination, Public Feeling, and the Sunday Times Heritage Project / Duane Jethro